Can following the news on data privacy issues affect an individual’s concern about their own privacy? This report seeks to find what is behind someone’s concern about data privacy.
Figure 1: Photo by Towfiqu Barbhuiya
While technology brings more and more benefits to society every day, it also brings along a myriad of new problems - one of which is data privacy. As social media, online shopping, remote work, video streaming and other digital services become more widespread, data sharing becomes more central to our social and economic dynamics. Since issues of data breaches, hacking, cybercrime, unlawful information sharing and more are becoming progressively more common, it is important to understand how individuals from different places and groups relate to their data so that we can find the best ways to prevent these problems from happening while still reaping the benefits of the digital world. First, we need to know just how much individuals are aware of these issues, or just how much they truly care. In other words, does an individual’s knowledge data privacy issues influence their own level of concern about data privacy?
In this study, I intend on analyzing whether individuals who are more familiar with the framework of data privacy tend to be more or less granular in their relationship with data sharing, that is, whether they are more or less cautious when choosing to share their information with companies, the government, and other institutions. My hypothesis is that individuals who have more knowledge on issues of data privacy will be more concerned about their data, potentially being more protective of their information and more careful in how they engage with technology, while individuals with less familiarity with the notions of data privacy will tend to be less attentive. I believe this hypothesis might be true since individuals with more knowledge on data privacy will most likely be more aware of the potential dangers that surround sharing personal information with companies and services, therefore looking to prevent these dangers from happening to them. On the other hand, individuals who are not aware of the perils of data sharing might not be afraid of engaging with technology more freely, given that they might not fully comprehend the risks involved with sharing their data.
The data used in this study is taken from the June 2019 survey “American Trends Panel Wave 49”, carried out by the company Ipsos and sponsored by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Respondents were US adults randomly selected from phone number random-digit-dial surveys, answering a series of multiple-choice questions on issues related to technology, social media, surveillance and data privacy. The survey had a total of 4272 participants; this is an overview of the dataset: